Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904 – 1973) is renowned for his whole body of work, but is perhaps best known for his love poetry, including the set of love poetry that he published in 1924: Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada (Twenty love poems and a song of despair).

Born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, Neruda's work has been translated into many languages and has sold over a million copies worldwide. Neruda always wrote in green ink as it was his personal color of hope.

Be inspired by the joy, passion, beauty, and melancholy of love as expressed by this Nobel-prize winning poet.

Tonight I can write (from “Twenty Poems of Love”)

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.Write for example: ‘The night is fracturedand they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance’The night wind turns in the sky and sings.I can write the saddest lines tonight.I loved her, sometimes she loved me too.On nights like these I held her in my arms.I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky.She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes.I can write the saddest lines tonight.To think I don’t have her, to feel I have lost her.Hear the vast night, vaster without her.Lines fall on the soul like dew on the grass.What does it matter that I couldn’t keep her.The night is fractured and she is not with me.That is all. Someone sings far off. Far off,my soul is not content to have lost her.As though to reach her, my sight looks for her.My heart looks for her: she is not with meThe same night whitens, in the same branches.We, from that time, we are not the same.I don’t love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.My voice tried to find the breeze to reach her.Another’s kisses on her, like my kisses.Her voice, her bright body, infinite eyes.I don’t love her, that’s certain, but perhaps I love her.Love is brief: forgetting lasts so long.Since, on these nights, I held her in my arms,my soul is not content to have lost her.Though this is the last pain she will make me suffer,and these are the last lines I will write for her.

Sonata

Neither the heart cut by a piece of glass in a wasteland of thorns nor the atrocious waters seen in the cornersof certain houses, waters like eyelids and eyescan capture your waist in my handswhen my heart lifts its oakstowards your unbreakable thread of snow.Nocturnal sugar, spirit of the crowns,ransomedhuman blood, your kissessend into exileand a stroke of water, with remnants of the sea,neats on the silences that wait for yousurrounding the worn chairs, wearing out doors.Nights with bright spindles,divided, material, nothingbut voice, nothing butnaked every day.Over your breasts of motionless current,over your legs of firmness and water,over the permanence and the prideof your naked hairI want to be, my love, now that the tears are throwninto the raucous baskets where they accumulate,I want to be, my love, alone with a syllableof mangled silver, alone with a tip of your breast of snow.

Your Feet

When I cannot look at your face I look at your feet. Your feet of arched bone, your hard little feet. I know that they support you, and that your sweet weight rises upon them. Your waist and your breasts, the doubled purple of your nipples, the sockets of your eyes that have just flown away, your wide fruit mouth, your red tresses, my little tower. But I love your feet only because they walked upon the earth and upon the wind and upon the waters, until they found me.

Your hands (from "The Captain's Verses")

When your hands leaptowards mine, love,what do they bring me in flight?Why did they stopat my lips, so suddenly,why do I know them,as if once before,I have touched them,as if, before being,they travelledmy forehead, my waist?Their smoothness camewinging through time,over the sea and the smoke,over the Spring,and when you laidyour hands on my chestI knew those wingsof the gold doves,I knew that clay,and that colour of grain.The years of my lifehave been roadways of searching,a climbing of stairs,a crossing of reefs.Trains hurled me onwardswaters recalled me,on the surface of grapesit seemed that I touched you.Wood, of a sudden,made contact with you,the almond-tree summonedyour hidden smoothness,until both your handsclosed on my chest,like a pair of wingsending their flight.

Drunk as Drunk

Drunk as drunk on turpentineFrom your open kisses,Your wet body wedgedBetween my wet body and the strakeOf our boat that is made of flowers,Feasted, we guide it - our fingersLike tallows adorned with yellow metal -Over the sky's hot rim,The day's last breath in our sails.Pinned by the sun between solsticeAnd equinox, drowsy and tangled togetherWe drifted for months and wokeWith the bitter taste of land on our lips,Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for limeAnd the sound of a ropeLowering a bucket down its well. Then,We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,And lay like fishUnder the net of our kisses.

Two happy lovers...

Two happy lovers make one bread, a single moon drop in the grass. Walking, they cast two shadows that flow together; waking, they leave one sun empty in their bed. Of all the possible truths, they chose the day; they held it, not with ropes but with an aroma. They did not shred the peace; they did not shatter words; their happiness is a transparent tower. The air and wine accompany the lovers. The night delights them with its joyous petals. They have a right to all the carnations. Two happy lovers, without an ending, with no death, they are born, they die, many times while they live: they have the eternal life of the Natural.

Your Laughter

Take bread away from me, if you wish,take air away, butdo not take from me your laughter.Do not take away the rose,the lance flower that you pluck,the water that suddenlybursts forth in joy,the sudden waveof silver born in you.My struggle is harsh and I come backwith eyes tiredat times from having seenthe unchanging earth,but when your laughter entersit rises to the sky seeking meand it opens for me allthe doors of life.My love, in the darkesthour your laughteropens, and if suddenlyyou see my blood stainingthe stones of the street,laugh, because your laughterwill be for my handslike a fresh sword.Next to the sea in the autumn,your laughter must raiseits foamy cascade,and in the spring, love,I want your laughter likethe flower I was waiting for,the blue flower, the roseof my echoing country.Laugh at the night,at the day, at the moon,laugh at the twistedstreets of the island,laugh at this clumsyboy who loves you,but when I openmy eyes and close them,when my steps go,when my steps return,deny me bread, air,light, spring,but never your laughterfor I would die.